The Practice of the Presence of God.
By Claire Edwards DSNU
July 2025
From the first moment that I became aware of my spiritual gifts and began in earnest to understand the nature of my true self and to connect with Spirit I have tried to learn as much as possible from others and this has lead me to read a variety of books. Many have influenced my thinking, some have helped me to understand more clearly and others as my own experience and ideas have grown now seem to be somewhat contradictory to what I know to be true for me.
One of the books that I have read is “The Practice of the Presence of God and Spiritual Maxims”. This was written by Brother Lawrence a Carmelite monk who lived in the 1600s. In his book he talks about how to keep the thought of God with you when undertaking all things. So as he makes bread in the monastery he begins by acknowledging God and then through every step of making it, he acts as if God is physically with him. He does write that at times he finds this hard to do and that he has also forgotten to do it. He does not admonish himself he just begins the practice again.
I know many whom seem to take umbrage at the word God and I have written of this before. But Brother Lawrence is talking about the divine source or creative power that dwells within all things including us. He is trying to forge a personal and intimate relationship with the love that pervades all things. Rumi – the Sufi mystic also sought to have a personal and intimate relationship with God. In Rumi’s writings and poetry he talks of God as “his beloved” and the manner in which he writes to God reveals the love he has for God. It is reverential, it is as if he is writing to someone whom he is in a relationship with. And the truth is he was!
Brother Lawrence and Rumi – both with a differing way of celebrating God had the same awareness that to fully understand ourselves and the beauty of our spirit and the nature of our world, was to acknowledge and seek to know the source from where we came.
Though both write in vastly different ways they were both seeking a mystical experience that would bring them closer to God. These two men from many years ago understood the need for this, the importance of this and tried to share it with others.
To accept that we are a Spirit undergoing a physical experience within a physical body that is the first step. That some people are able to act as the instruments of those in the Spirit world, whether this be when giving healing or the passing on of messages is one of the next steps.
But this understanding that we have gleaned should lead us to question where we ultimately came from. What caused our Spirit to be? Where can this Spirit ascend to or evolve to become as we walk the path to “enlightenment”.
Many believe that when we die we find ourselves in the Spirit world reunited with our loved ones to continue the learning that we wish to. Others hold the belief that after a period of time in the Spirit world, we will return in some way to the physical world to live another life from which we will learn more lessons and undergo experiences that refine our vibration and that this happens a number of times.
But what happens when we have refined our vibration, when we have learned all the lessons that a person or Spirit can undergo? Do we then become angels and Archangels – that is Spirits from a higher realm with the task of helping and guiding those just beginning their first life time or spiritual awakening?
Some of these answers we are not yet privy to. I don’t believe it to be a bad thing, we must experience the fullness of our present life time, we should embrace each moment as we walk along our pathway with faith, hope and sensitivity to ourselves and to those we share our world with.
What we can do though is reconnect with the power and the love that caused us to be after first thinking of what we could be and what we could ultimately become. The source that made no mistake when first it made each and every single one of us. We can seek to know this limitless love from which we came.
We are not just a random selection of cells that caused a physical body, we are, each of us, animated due to the Spirit that we are. All things within our world share this force, this substance, this energy and part of us that does not die but simply changes form when the physical demise of the body is complete.
Who or what is this power? Is it arrogant to think that we can seek to communicate with it? I do not believe so. I believe, as do others, that the love that created us is like a parent whom loves their child, their creation with unconditional love. Who wants to guide and protect them. Who wants to be able to teach and support when asked. Who takes joys in our achievements and who weeps at our pain. And who wishes to be known and loved by their child.
I wonder if it must at times be hard for the love that created us to be seemingly so distant to us when it pervades all the things around us and yet perceive it many do not. The many ways in which God presents itself to us are numerous each and every day. From the birds singing in the trees, to the wind that moves the clouds to bring the rain. The stars and the moon shining in the night sky seemingly a show of light from the dark that tells of other wonders and other forms of life within our universe.
The power, the love, the intelligence, that is God, seeks not to hide from us or to keep its distance from us quite the opposite. It created us, it sustains us, it shares with us the wonder of creation and the blessings that life can show to us. Whether we seek to understand this, to communicate with and to know this love is our own choice. The door is never closed to us, we simply have to acknowledge that this love is there, to speak with it, to sit with it, to come to know it as intimately as we can. To simply “Practice the Presence of God”.
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